A Nuggets fan celebrates during Denver’s Game 5 win at the Pepsi Center. (Steve Nehf, The Denver Post)

The NBA announced Thursday that the winner of the Denver-Golden State series will play in the Western Conference semifinals starting Monday at San Antonio.

With the Warriors leading the first-round series 3-2, Denver has to win Game 6 on Thursday night at Oakland, then again Saturday at home to advance. Because the Nets beat the Bulls 95-92 on Thursday night to force a Game 7 on Saturday, the Nuggets would have an 8 p.m. Saturday tipoff at the Pepsi Center.

The conference semis will open Monday, then Game 2 is May 8 at San Antonio. Games 3-4 are not set for the best-of-seven semifinals.

The Denver Nuggets won Tuesday, doing so with “dirty plays” on Stephen Curry, according to the Warriors’ coach.

“They tried to send hit men on Steph. … The screen (set) on Curry by the foul line was a shot at his ankle clearly. That can’t be debated,” an intense Mark Jackson said after the loss, which set up Game 6 Thursday at Oracle Arena. “I’ve got inside information that some people don’t like that brand of basketball. And they clearly didn’t co-sign it. So they wanted to let me know that they had no parts in what was taking place.

“Let the best team win, and with the exception of going down with a freak injury, let everybody leave out of here healthy. That’s not good basketball.”

Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried battles for a loose ball against the Lakers this season.

Here are four things to keep an eye on in the Nuggets-Lakers NBA playoff series:

The Nuggets’ drive-and-kick game: They haven’t solved all of their offensive execution issues in the half court, but this has been an effective cure for many of their ills – and has been a good counter to teams looking to simply plug the lane against the Nuggets and take their chances. The Nuggets just keep the ball in constant motion, probing the defense until they either get a lane to the basket or get the defense to help and leave a shooter open.

One of the Nuggets’ favorite reads is a backside 3-point shooter, and when he’s on the court usually that player is Arron Afflalo. An initial screen is set for a point guard, and that screen is set so the point guard drives away from the side Afflalo is on. The guard uses the screen, and as he gets into the lane looks for the cross-court pass to the open shooter on the backside of the play, whose man has collapsed into the lane for help defense. More often than not, that player gets an uncontested or lightly-contested shot. For a weak jump-shooting team like the Nuggets this action is gold because NBA players – good jump shooters or not -– can knock down open looks.

If there’s one thing Nuggets coach George Karl is sure of, it’s this: “I don’t think (Russell) Westbrook and (Kevin) Durant are going to make 18 of 25 field goals.”

He paused.

“I’m hoping.”

Because if it happens again, the Nuggets might be staring at an 0-2 series deficit by the end of the night. And yet of the two, the better bet for the Nuggets is to change things up on Westbrook because there’s a bigger chance of a significant swing in his performance than in Durant’s. The Nuggets defended Durant pretty much exactly the way they wanted in Game 1, but as with any superstar player in the league, he made a lot of tough, contested shots. Karl will just have to hope continued hands in Durant’s face results in misses the second time around.

Though OKC’s supporting cast was barely a blip on the stat sheet, the team was able to sneak out a 107-103 victory inside Oklahoma City Arena.
How the Thunder’s role players perform in Game 2 at 7 p.m. Wednesday could swing the series in what qualifies as an extremely intriguing opening-round matchup.

George Karl had intended it to be a James Bond-style secret weapon more than an ‘If in an emergency, break glass’ thing, but the Ty Lawson/Raymond Felton combo may become more of a necessity now than a change of pace.

Arron Afflalo’s hamstring will not allow him to play in Game 1 against the Thunder. The Nuggets have to adjust on the fly. The biggest thing the Nuggets miss without Afflalo is 3-point shooting, he was one of the team’s most reliable long-range marksmen at 42.3 percent. Now? Felton moves into that spot. He’s nailed 45 percent of them since he’s been a Nugget, but does it more as a spot-up shooter and sometimes in transition. Afflalo, as the shooting guard, was more versatile. He could spot up, hit in transition and come off of screens to hit threes.

As a primary ball handler, Felton doesn’t normally run off of screens. Tendencies show that in a pick-and-roll situations he’s not going to look to come up firing before he checks out the passing possibilities first. Karl may not start the Lawson/Felton duo – he still has reserve point guard minutes to keep in mind, and the Nuggets don’t have a third point guard – but the two might be used at the same time as much as they have since the trade.

This is not a super sore spot for Nuggets coach George Karl but he’ll jump to Ty Lawson’s rescue when the subject turns to the reduced effectiveness of his starting point guard in half court situations, particularly in pick-and-roll plays.

“He’s got a great assist-to-turnover ratio,” Karl said. And he’s right. Lawson has a robust, 4-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio this season. There’s no arguing the value in that.

But then there’s this. Ty Lawson had 137 total turnovers this season. Over 100 of them came in various half court situations. Against the Thunder, Lawson turned it over 12 times in the four games. Eleven of the 12 turnovers occurred in the half court, and eight of those came on the pick-and-roll when he handled the ball. So, 66 percent of his turnovers against OKC came in pick-and-roll situations. When you’re facing a team that has been as solid at getting back and cutting off transition as OKC has against Denver this season, Lawson has to improve.

On a team that has its share of colorful characters to play the bad-guy role, the Nuggets center has become Public Enemy No. 1 in the Thunder Nation. First, he went toe-to-toe and forehead-to-forehead with Perkins, then he tussled with the Thunder big man again a few days later. Now, he’s coming to town for a wild, wild Western Conference showdown.

If the Thunder felt any pressure from going into this year’s playoffs with home-court advantage or heightened expectations, you couldn’t tell from Friday’s practice.

And finally, a strategic breakdown of the series. According to The Oklahoman, the Thunder has a plan to deal with Denver’s speedy point guards:

The Thunder’s answer for Denver’s quick point guards? Russell Westbrook, Thabo Sefolosha and James Harden.

The Thunder has physical, big, athletic guards. Westbrook can match up with one of the Nugget point guards, and Sefolosha is versatile enough defensively that he often is assigned players as varied as Deron Williams to LeBron James.

“We just played our game, what we do defensively,” Westbrook said. “We didn’t worry what they were doing.”

Carmelo Anthony calmly let that sentence flow from his mouth about 30 minutes after the Jazz surgically removed all of the fun out of what most thought was supposed to be another Nuggets win in Game 2 of the first round series between the two teams on Monday night.

But here’s actually what’s started now: Adversity.

And this really is the biggest storyline for the Nuggets in this postseason. Specifically, how will they deal with it? A positive answer to that question can mean a significant playoff run is in store. A negative answer could mean the end of the road in the first round.

The fact of the matter is, over the last month this team hasn’t handled adversity as well as anyone would like – in small or large situations. In Game 2, the Nuggets simply melted down late in the contest.

In the fourth quarter, from 1:44 to 25.4 here are the Nuggets possessions:

To recap: Nuggets were 1-of-2 from the free throw line, committed three fouls and turned the ball over once.

“We’ll take all of that,” deadpanned Utah guard Deron Williams.

There is a general lack of mental toughness this year, and that just wasn’t the case last season. The 2008-09 team took no prisoners, dished out the pain, imposed its will on the opponent and steamrolled through every challenge. There was no situation too tough, no setback to difficult to overcome. There was a steely-eyed focused mentality that got them over every hurdle and nearly into the NBA Finals.

Instead, this team often unravels when times get tough. They do not consistently execute in pressure situations. They frequently miss assignments on the defensive end. They listen to coach Adrian Dantley about half the time, and none of those things are good enough to maintain success. Especially in the playoffs.

That said, Billups’ decision not to give the ball to Ty Lawson in the final seconds will be a hot topic, but probably shouldn’t be.

Dantley inserted Lawson into the game with six seconds left in order to get the ball up the court quickly. Billups, however, never gave Lawson the ball claiming he wasn’t sure what was supposed to take place, only that “I didn’t know what was going on.” Whether he did or didn’t, Billups has vetoed some of coach George Karl’s decisions in the past, so this shouldn’t come as a shock. As maybe the NBA’s best leader and one of the league’s most consistent winners, he’s earned that latitude.

The only problem with it now is it continues to chip away at Dantley’s authority, and if the acting coach doesn’t at least have that, the Nuggets are going nowhere. Dantley’s decision-making can only be analyzed if the players carry out his wishes. And right now there is a clear belief among some of the players that they know just as much as he does. So his voice becomes easier to dismiss.

Just as winning streaks have raised the confidence of this team, losing streaks – and tough moments in pressurized games – seem to feed on themselves and get worse. One loss becomes two-of-three or five-of-six or three in a row. Issues like defensive focus are spoken about in the most comprehensive terms, but then they may or may not be carried out the next game night.

And there was a false sense of security out of Game 1. The Nuggets scored points and won, which temporarily masked the fact that they gave up a ton of points as well. In two games they have allowed 113.5 points per contest.

If they win this series playing that type of basketball, they’ll be out of the second round in five games, max. The Lakers are likely to be there, and if L.A. averages 113 points per game, vacation plans can be made for about nine days after the series starts. It’ll be over that fast.

But the Nuggets won’t even make that far unless they can address their biggest flaw – an unstable mindset. There is time to steer the ship in the right direction, but it has to be done now.

With injuries ranging from a broken finger to a badly sprained ankle, a game off down the stretch could only do Kobe Bryant some good. And so the Lakers rested their superstar guard. But was there a bit of gamesmanship as well? You’d be foolish to discount it. Lakers coach Phil Jackson is the best at getting in the heads of opposing players and coaches.

And that would serve the Lakers particularly well against the Nuggets.

The Nuggets began chipping away at the Lakers’ mental stranglehold on them in last season’s playoffs when they won Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals in L.A. Prior to that, the Nuggets were 1-10 – and a very bad 1-10 – against the Lakers, including playoffs, since the start of the 2007-08 season.

But here’s why Thursday night’s win was critically important: It allowed the Nuggets to retain the positive mindset they gained. They’ll need that in the playoffs.

A loss to the Lakers without Kobe, without Andrew Bynum, sends a “We can beat you anytime, anywhere, with anyone on the court” message. And that’s at least dangerous, if not disastrous, especially when the Nuggets may possibly see them sooner rather than later in the postseason. Carmelo Anthony shrugged off any talk of mind games, but he also smiled as he dismissed it.

“They’re still the Lakers,” Anthony said. “It really doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure Kobe was here tonight and wanted to play, he was in the back hoping and wishing he had that ball at the end. They’re probably just resting him right now. I don’t think Phil is playing any mind games.”

The Nuggets have slowly inched toward playing higher-level basketball over the past few days. In four straight wins there have been positive steps in defensive intensity, offensive efficiency and the play of individual players such as Chauncey Billups, who was in a mini-slump on the team’s last big road trip at the end of March and continues to work his way out of shooting struggles.

Not that any of those gains would have been completely undone by dropping the game, but losing to a depleted (by choice and injury) Lakers team would have been a significant blow to the psyche of a team whose mental state has been thoroughly tested in the absence of their coach George Karl, their defensive leader, Kenyon Martin, and numerous adverse situations that called for tough-mindedness. And they’ve struggled to a degree to pass all of those tests though things are improving.

“The process is going on,” Billups said. “Mentally, we’re in a pretty good spot considering where we were.”

The Nuggets didn’t need a setback, and they didn’t get one. The Lakers, on the other hand, could take the game or leave it. That’s why Kobe sat out. Why play in a relatively meaningless contest? They still need to clinch home court advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs, but that can be done today at Minnesota, and, yes, The Closer will likely dress for that one.

The Nuggets on the other hand, still need all the momentum they can get. Of the main teams vying for the No. 2 spot in the West – Nuggets, Mavericks, Suns, Jazz – Denver has the second-toughest schedule, only to Phoenix. But Martin’s return seems imminent and could come as early as Saturday. Adrian Dantley is getting a better grip on the team and received a much-appreciated vote of confidence from coach George Karl, whom he visited Thursday afternoon to talk basketball strategy.

Where all of this ends up remains to be seen. But taking down the Lakers is a solid start.

Prior to tonight’s game against Orlando, the Nuggets were already in the playoffs.

By virtue of Memphis’ overtime loss to Milwaukee, the Nuggets clinched a playoff spot along with Dallas and Utah. All three teams just needed Memphis to lose to secure a spot, and the Grizzlies obliged, losing to Milwaukee this afternoon.

Additionally, the Nuggets could have clinched a spot with a win if Memphis would have won today.

It is the seventh consecutive season the Nuggets have reached the playoffs. Now, all that’s left to determine is their seed and opponent. Going into the game, the Nuggets were in the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference, which right now brings with it a first-round matchup against the San Antonio Spurs.

Carmelo Anthony: A+
The Nuggets’ best player played one of the best games in his career, barely missing a shot and scoring from everywhere on the court. Lost in all of the talk about points were his six rebounds, four assists and one block. Anthony was superb all night.

Kenyon Martin: B+
Martin played a fantastic floor game with 14 points (7 of 14 from the field) eight rebounds, two assists, two steals and two blocks. About the only thing he did wrong was foul Kobe at the end. He also had a difficult time keeping Pau Gasol off the boards – but so did every Nugget who guarded the Lakers’ big man.

Nene: C-
If this was just a first half grade, Nene would get near an ‘A.’ But after dominating in the first half, here are the gory second-half details: 12 minutes, 0-for-2 shooting, two rebounds, five fouls. Not good.

Dahntay Jones: C
In 15 minutes, Jones was 0-for-3 from the field, had one rebound, three fouls and three turnovers. He was part of the Nuggets’ successful effort to stop Kobe early, but was not on the court at any point in the fourth quarter when Bryant exploded.

Chauncey Billups: B+
Billups was a facilitator in the first half (six of his eight assists) and more of a scorer in the second (13 of his 18 points). He only turned the ball over once, but missed three straight free throws at the beginning of the game.

J.R. Smith: C
There were clear jitters in his first WCF game. He had odd turnovers as a result, but had just three in the game. Smith did not shoot it well (2-of-7 overall), but did give a good effort on the boards with five rebounds. He was 1-of-4 from the field in the fourth.

Chris Andersen: B
Andersen was an unsung hero Tuesday night. His eight points were accompanied by five rebounds, two blocks and a steal. He was active most of the night and stayed away from foul trouble. He’ll still need to be a bigger part of the Nuggets’ effort to keep Gasol and Andrew Bynum off the boards.

Anthony Carter: D
Unfortunately, he’ll be remembered for The Pass. But he was also 0-for-4 from the field. He did have three assists to one turnover, but that one was critical. No one felt worse than Carter afterward and he’ll bounce back from it.

Linas Kleiza: INC
Kleiza played just seven minutes in the game and was largely invisible with just a personal foul and a steal in the stat sheet.

LOS ANGELES – So there was the obvious. Free throws were the central issue in the Nuggets’ Game 1 loss. But there was also the 22-10 disparity in the Lakers’ favor in second chance points; the 17-7 Lakers’ edge in offensive rebounds; and the fact that Los Angeles held the Nuggets to seven fast break points, had more rebounds (46-37), had more assists (25-24), shot better from the 3-point line (44 percent to 42) and blocked more shots (9-8).

They out-detailed the Nuggets in nearly every way. But here’s the detail I thought was most poignant:

LAMAR ODOM ON ANTHONY CARTER

Carter’s throw away to L.A.’s Trevor Ariza late in the fourth quarter was the signature moment of the game. But quite frankly it’s difficult for me to lay the lion’s share of the blame at Carter’s feet. Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s use of the 6-10 Odom to guard the 6-2 Carter’s inbounds pass was a small detail that proved to be genius.

Carter struggled with Odom’s length. He had to lob a softball pass up to get the ball over Odom’s long arms and Ariza made a great break on the ball for the steal. At this point in the season, when there isn’t much difference between the teams it’s the little things that generally make the biggest difference. A taller Nugget inbounding the ball has an easier time getting more juice on the pass, making that play’s success rate higher. That’s a change Nuggets coach George Karl will likely make in the future, but he was out-dueled this time. Score one for Jackson.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

If you’re looking for signs of encouragement, the Nuggets provided a lot in a game that was decided at the wire. Anthony scored at will. The Nuggets executed well for the better part of the game. Kenyon Martin was active all over the court. They got to the rim all night en route to 46 points in the paint (Lakers had 40), and they were able to build a 13-point lead on the Lakers’ home court.

But.

Here’s where I get a little apprehensive about how just good the Nuggets chances to win the series really are. Of the two teams, I’d say the Nuggets played B+ basketball for the better part of the night. I’d say the Lakers played C- basketball until Kobe bailed them out in the end.

My point is, I think the Lakers have more room to improve from Game 1 to Game 2 – and they won. If Denver’s finish kept it from playing ‘A’ basketball, then there’s not much more to be seen from the Nuggets. Free throw shooting can obviously improve. But is Anthony really going to shoot 70 percent from the field overall and 80 percent from 3-point range in every game? No. The Lakers played listless basketball for the better part of the game and still found a way to win. They shot 41 percent from the field and still won. Just three players cracked 10 points, and they still won.

What happens if both get to their ‘A’ games? That’s a longer journey for the Lakers, which means we probably have only seen them scratch the surface. That’s a scary thought as the series moves forward.

CHAUNCEY’S REGRET

Of all of the lessons Nuggets guard Chauncey Billups has taught this season, after the game he lamented about the one he didn’t teach to young J.R. Smith, who is playing in his first NBA conference finals series. It’s interesting stuff.

With 3.2 seconds left, Smith was fouled before getting up a 3-point shot or passing to someone who could. He made the first free throw and missed the second intentionally to try and get the Nuggets a crack at making a game-tying shot. Instead, Bryant came away with the rebound on the intentional miss, he threw the ball high in the air down court and the game was over.

“It’s a tough play because we don’t have any timeouts,” Billups said. “And I know what they’re thinking…let somebody get (the ball) other than me. And don’t let them get a 3-point shot off. Foul them, put them on the free throw line. So in that position I wish I would have – I wish I could have got the ball.

“They did a good job. I couldn’t get it. But I wish I could have told J.R. that they were going to foul and when you see him come to foul, shoot the ball. Just little things that you learn through experience and through a lot of tough battles that he hasn’t been in yet.

“So that’s why I was disappointed that I – not that I didn’t get the ball, that I didn’t relay that knowledge to him, that savvy to him, where when (he sees) them coming to foul him, to try to go up and shoot the ball and get three shots. Just little things like that.”

Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.

Nicki Jhabvala is the Sports Digital News Editor for The Denver Post. Before arriving in Denver, she spent five years at Sports Illustrated working primarily as its online NBA editor, and she was most recently the overnight home page editor at the New York Times.